Wednesday, December 28, 2011

It protects you but bicycling on the streets of Oman can be fatal.–KASExercise protects youhttp://main.omanobserver.om/node/61204

WASHINGTON — Getting older by the day and you feel you’re forgetting things? A bit of muscle flexing could help you, says a new research.The findings suggest moderate exercise may modify the brain to boost its ability to protect itself during ageing, when it is particularly vulnerable.Researchers led by Ruth Barrientos, University of Colorado, Boulder, found older rats experienced memory loss following a bacterial infection, an outcome not seen in young adult rats. But they found them recovering from memory loss if they ran just about half a kilometre each week.In humans, older adults are more likely than the younger ones to suffer memory impairment following severe bacterial infection or injury, reports The Journal of Neuroscience.“This is the first study to show that exercise reduces susceptibility to the cognitive impairments that follow infection in ageing animals,” said Barrientos, according to a Colorado statement.Bacterial infections kick off a cascade of events that signal to the brain that something is wrong.They also found immune defence cells in the older animals’s brains became more reactive to infection, releasing more chemicals involved in inflammation in the hippocampus (inside the brain), as compared with younger animals. — IANS